Dear Readers:
Everyone can be a China Hand, why can’t it be a high school student? As China is becoming more internationally significant, the relationship between China and the rest of the world is shifting in form. The meteoric rise of Chinese industry and well-being embody the transformation that has been taken place, and will continue in the future. Inevitably, America and other western countries have deemed China as the biggest impediment on their future development. Western media, thus, have either purposefully or unconsciously blocked the availability for people outside of China to have an undistorted sight. Thus, in order to provide a stage for students to discuss China-related issues, in 2012 two Yale graduates founded the ChinaHands magazine in their university. In 2020, adhering to the aim of extending this platform to pre-college students, ChinaHands cooperate with Liuyin Academy and Edwin Black to convene high school students to express their opinions on Chinese politics, economics, and culture. The focus of each passage varies greatly, which offers a kaleidoscopic interpretation in societal issues or academic value, cultural preservation or economic application. Though we belong to a younger age group, the standard for passage to be selected remains identical to college level. Adolescent’s perspective matters not only because it offers contradictory and diversified perspective that could deviate from the mainstream opinion, but more specifically all of our participants dwell and live in China or Beijing for years that provides a more intimate relationship with Chinese opinion and culture. For example, we put a special section in this issue, that includes several student’s interview and anthropological field work with Wa minority group that locates in Yunnan province. As such, we have access to a more authentic and a more Chinese standpoint. During the time of covid and aggravated xenophobia, an authentic view of China-related issues is fundamentally pivotal. Some analysts hold a historical determinism view that China is meant to stand at the opposite camp to western world, while others ignorantly oversimplify Chinese politics and innocently disregard the cultural and ideological influence on modern day China-related decisions. We at ChinaHands x Beijing are to analyze, comment, and raise attention on Chinese societal and cultural issues rationally. In addition, along with rational analysis, the uniqueness of student perspective will motivate more adolescents to think logically and conduct high-level interpretation.
This is our debut in magazine making, and the first official issue of China Hands Beijing division.
Charlie Cheng (Editor/Founder)